Making EDI training more than a tick-box exercise

The edgelords are here. Social media can be a cesspit in which cruelty reigns supreme and the rights of marginalised groups to exist are derided as conspiracies of the “woke” - a word originally intended to refer to people who were aware of social injustice and inequality.

Inevitably, some regressive attitudes have seeped into workplaces, but as those workplaces have become more diverse, this poses a dilemma for companies: how do we teach our staff about diversity and ensure that less powerful groups have a voice?

Dr Ciarán McFadden-Young is an academic specialising in equality, diversity and inclusion. He is gay and neurodiverse, having recently been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and he offers diversity training to companies.

“There is not a lot of equality, diversity and inclusion being taught in universities, but it is on the increase,” he says.

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“A training programme might address heteronormativity (the assumption that everyone is straight), code-switching (how, for instance, an LGBTQI+ person, a Traveller, an autistic person or a person from an African background, may consciously or unconsciously change how they speak or behave in an effort to fit in or ‘pass’ when around people who are different from them - something which the academic literature shows can be mentally exhausting), and the subtle aspects of living out an EDI policy and practice.

“It can also look at encouraging awareness of disclosure by letting people feel that a hidden or marginalised identity will be accepted and embraced, without forcing people to come out. People may not always know that they are neurodiverse - I didn’t until recently - and they could become disabled by an accident or old age.”

It isn’t as simple, however, as corralling your staff into a diversity workshop, particularly as some may be resistant.

“Human resources has to factor this possible resistance into the design of their policies,” says McFadden-Young. “Inclusion initiatives can be seen as part of a ‘woke’ agenda and an attack on dominant groups,”.

He advises companies to approach the issue with care, setting out their stall with well-chosen words, bearing in mind people can react negatively if they feel they are being coerced. And, he says, sometimes resistance is down to a feeling that the training is a tick-box exercise and won’t be effective, which makes it important to really listen in a one-on-one conversation, with the HR side acknowledging that they don’t know everything.

Judy Yinhua Zhu is director of training and education at Huawei Ireland.

“We believe in lifelong learning,” she says. “One of our courses - recruitment and selection - is offered to line managers to enable them conduct interviews in a professional, effective and transparent manner by identifying and selecting candidates who fit the competencies required by the role itself.

“Another course - cross-culture awareness - is designed to enable our employees to have a deeper understanding of Huawei’s company values and the cultural differences that a diverse workforce has shown. Our workforce here is not as binary as Chinese and Irish, but employs a wide range of high-quality talents across Europe and other regions too.”

There is no shortage of companies offering this training.

Healthcare insurance firm Laya offers support and training, including short courses that typically run for a half-day to two days, on inclusive leadership and supporting a diverse workforce, including LGBTQI+ employees, neurodiverse and disabled employees.

CIPD Ireland (Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) also offers training programmes in this area.

“This includes training around unconscious bias in recruitment, where a recruiter has a lot of assumptions as to who can and who can’t do a job,” says Mary Connaughton, director of CIPD Ireland.

CIPD can also provide support on profiling your organisation and how to comply with legislation around mandatory gender pay gap reporting.

Paula Fagan, CEO of LGBT Ireland, says that companies can bring about change by promoting diversity and inclusion, updating policies and procedures, undertaking training, and challenging homophobia, biphobia and transphobia in the workplace and wider society.

LGBT Ireland offers awareness training to a wide range of organisations and workplaces, although limited resources means it prioritises this for frontline workers, especially health and social care professionals as well as people in public-facing roles in other statutory services.

• Other diversity training:

https://irishcentrefordiversity.ie/training/

https://www.diversity.ie/

https://www.immigrantcouncil.ie/training/diversity-matters-training